What is it about?
Aolian landforms is an important ecosystem in coastal and inland deserts. We have shown the importance of vegetation in stability of aeolian sand deposits and the plant associations linked with each type of aelolian landforms. Deterioration of plant cover, decline in sub-shrubs and shrubs, lacking of trees and severe land degradation in the inland and coastal aeolian landforms of southern Kuwait are attributed to human impacts.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
About 75% of the hot desert of Kuwait showed moderate and severe land degradation and deterioration of plant cover due to high intensity of anthropogenic activities including urbanization, camping, off-road driving, overgrazing, salinization, oil contamination, industrial activities, and quarrying. Although several studies have examined the sedimentological aspects of the aeolian deposits of Kuwait , there has been little attention to link the aeolian landforms to vegetation composition and intensity of human impacts.
Perspectives
Writing this article was a great pleasure as it has co-authors from different research institutes in Kuwait with whom I have had long standing collaborations. This article presents a new classification of aeolian landforms in Kuwait based on the vegetation, geomorphological characteristics and deterioration intensity due to human impact.
Dr Raafat Hassan Abd El-Wahab
Suez Canal University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Influences of Physiographic Factors, Vegetation Patterns and Human Impacts on Aeolian Landforms in Arid Environment, Arid Ecosystems, April 2018, Pleiades Publishing Ltd,
DOI: 10.1134/s2079096118020026.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
